MODERN PRIMITIVES RARE GORGEOUS HARDBACK shrinkwrapped

RARE LIMITED HARDBACK (shrinkwrapped; only autographed by V. Vale upon REQUEST, as we have to break the shrinkwrap!). Only 500 copies made. Gorgeous Vermilion End papers. Super-Archival. Printed on new, superior, glossy art paper for sharper photography; replace your old copy and upgrade as well! This is the 20th Anniversary Edition of MODERN PRIMITIVES—a book which launched a “Revolution” and introduced the world to body piercing and state-of-the-art tattoos. Brand new interview with Raelyn Gallina, plus tattoo/piercing community sponsorship pages in the back. This printing supersedes all previous editions offered on the Internet. Get the Archival Limited HARDBACK for only $50. Sorry, no more paperbacks.

“A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition.” — from V. Vale’s introduction.

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“As the man credited with launching the contemporary tattoo and body-modification movements almost single-handedly, UC Berkeley grad V. Vale has been called a prophet. His 1989 book MODERN PRIMITIVES inspired a generation to ink, pierce, and decoratively scar itself, not to mention branding itself with hot metal and rerouting its genitals.”—Anneli Rufus, East Bay Express

“Modern Primitives is a stunning compilation, so densely packed with strange material that all adds up to something much more than a succession of mere weirdnesses — the human body as its own extreme metaphor, or the body as an extreme metaphor of its own mind. A real terminal document.” – J.G. Ballard

“I loved the introduction in your previous book, and all the introductions to the other wonderful books you’ve made. Incidentally, your last publication, Modern Primitives, was extraordinary. That was an amazing book – that was a genuine work of modern urban anthropology. It was incredible. You could have been Margaret Mead going to Samoa – it was the equivalent of that. And it was never voyeuristic. It was an extraordinary book, beautifully conceived and researched in such depth. That’s what’s so wonderful about all your publications: the depth of them – they just go on and on. Where most books end, yours are just about beginning. I mean they really are very, very impressive. You’ve produced really amazing books; there’s no question about that.” – J.G. Ballard

First published 20 years ago, “Modern Primitives” is still called “the Bible of the tattooing-piercing underground.” Here is a celebratory reprinting, complete with a new introduction by original editor/publisher V. Vale. Also added is a new community section, where current practitioners have been invited to have their cards displayed. “Modern Primitives” was the first book to investigate not only the “how” but also the “why” of body modification practices. It reaches far back into history to multiform cultural traditions to illuminate one of today’s most wide-spread youth culture visual signifiers. Heavily illustrated with detailed, contemporary photographs, as well as archival anthropological images and drawings of ancient tattoo traditions, “Modern Primitives” was ground-zero for today’s body-modification trends. “A whole new generation needs to be exposed to this foundational handbook and manifesto for the body modification generation.”—Tattoo Mike

Here’s a little Ed Hardy interview excerpt: “I fled the cloying environment of the fine arts to do tattooing, but I should have seen this coming: by giving tattooing its legitimization and status as a fine art, suddenly you’re getting into the same old crap!”

“One thing I like about the Asian tradition: you don’t give a shit about that notion of “originality”. There’s something great about surrendering part of your ego to a “greater” tradition or stream of expression.” — Ed Hardy to V. Vale, Modern Primitives

If you’re read THIS FAR, we have a few copies of the earlier paperback MODERN PRIMITIVES book autographed by Charles Gatewood (R.I.P.) and V. Vale: email us direct at info@researchpubs.com for price and ordering information! For Gatewood fans ONLY; only one order per customer; no wholesale! This is RARE.

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2.25 lbs

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1 review for MODERN PRIMITIVES RARE GORGEOUS HARDBACK shrinkwrapped

Rated 5 out of 5

admin –July 12, 2013

“All of the people interviewed are looking for something very simple: a way of fighting back at mass production consumer society that prizes standardization above all else. Through ‘primitive’ modifications, they are taking possession of the only thing that any of us will ever really own: our bodies.”

—Whole Earth Review

Dispassionate ethnography that lets people put their behavior in its own context.”

The opening interview with Fakir Musafar, by day a wealthy Silicon Valley advertising executive, in his spare moments a master of self-mutilation, provides a riveting introduction.

Musafar, born in South Dakota, exposes a relatively tame collection of tattoos, but the photographs of what he does to himself to experience out-of-the-body states are, for the uninitiated, truly unbelievable. Musafar recounts how he always felt a misfit until, still a child, his father took him to a carnival freak show. ‘Right then I had an incurable desire to make marks on and put holes in my body.’

Musafar’s practices, all documented with photographs, include radical corseting, nipple and penis piercing, and more exotic rituals such as Kavandi-bearing (an East Indian practice in which the celebrant carries a carapace of spears on his body) and the Sundance (the Mandan Indian puberty rite in which the initiator hangs from holes pierced in his chest).

As the latter two instances imply, such practices in tribal cultures were used to induce hallucinatory or out-of-the-body states. Musafar and others have adopted them for the same purposes — to transcend the limitations of reason and logic mandated by the modern world.

Although the images might seem on casual viewing to be documents from an S&M cult, Musafar expresses little sympathy for sado-masochism, the banal goal of which is orgasm, a cheap thrill when communion with the cosmos is his aim.

RE/Search takes a sanguine view of body modification. Although V. Vale frankly acknowledges the pitfalls of romanticizing the primitive, he declares that the revival of ‘modern primitive’ activities is ‘the desire for, and the dream of, a more ideal society.’ RE/Search sees such practices as attempts to achieve wholeness. ‘All sensual experience functions to free us from ‘normal’ social restraints, to awaken our deadened bodies to life. All such activity points toward a goal: the creation of the ‘complete’ or ‘integrated’ man and woman, and in this we are yet prisoners digging an imaginary tunnel to freedom.’”

Modern Primitives examines a vivid contemporary enigma: the growing revival of highly visual (and sometimes shocking) “primitive” body modification practices – tattooing, multiple piercing, and scarification. Perhaps Nietzsche has an explanation: “One of the things that may drive thinkers to despair is the recognition of the fact that the illogical is necessary for man and that out of the illogical comes much that is good. It is so firmly rooted in the passions, in language, in art, in religion and generally in everything that gives value to life, that it cannot be withdrawn without thereby injuring all these beautiful things. It is only the all-too-naive person who can believe that the nature of man can be changed into a purely logical one.”

Civilization, with its emphasis on logic, may be stifling and life-thwarting, yet a cliche-ridden illusion as to what is “primitive” provides no solution to the problem: how do we achieve an integration of the poetic and scientific imagination in our lives? There are pitfalls on both sides, and what is absolutely not intended is any romanticization of “nature” or “primitive society.” After all, advances in science and technology have eliminated much mind-numbing, repetitive labor, and inventions such as the inexpensive microcomputer have opened up unprecedented possibilities for individual creative expression.

Obviously, it is impossible to return to an authentic “primitive” society. Those such as the Tasaday in the Philippines and the Dayaks in Borneo are irrevocably contaminated. Besides having been dubiously idealized and only partially understood in the first place, under scrutiny many “primitive” societies reveal forms of repression and coercion (such as the Yanoamo, who ritually bash each other’s heads in, and African groups who practice clitoridectomy – removal of the clitoris) which would be unbearable to emancipated individuals of today. What is implied by the revival of “modern primitive” activities is the desire for, and the dream of, a more ideal society.

Amidst an almost universal feeling of powerlessness to “change the world,” individuals are changing what they do have power over: their own bodies. That shadowy zone between the physical and the psychic is being probed for whatever insight and freedoms may be reclaimed. By giving visible bodily expression to unknown desires and latent obsessions welling up from within, individuals can provoke change – however inexplicable – in the external world of the social, besides freeing up a creative part of themselves; some part of their essence.

All sensual experience functions to free us from “normal” social restraints, to awaken our deadened bodies to life. All such activity points toward a goal: the creation of the “complete” or “integrated” man and woman, and in this we are yet prisoners digging an imaginary tunnel to freedom. Our most inestimable resource, the unfettered imagination, continues to be grounded in the only truly precious possession we can ever have and know, and which is ours to do with what we will: the human body.